"If you attempt to come near me, you dog," said Archy slowly through his clenched teeth, "I'll knock you off here into the sea."

"Will you?" cried Ram, dashing at his late prisoner again, dodging the blow struck at him, closing with his adversary; and then began a struggle which would have made the blood of an onlooker curdle, so terribly narrow and dangerous was the place where the encounter took place.

Of the pair, Archy Raystoke was a little the bigger, but the smuggler's son fully made up for any deficiency by his activity, and the hardening his muscles had undergone for years.

No blows were struck, the efforts of Ram being apparently directed to throwing the midshipman down, when he meant to sit upon him till he had reduced him to obedience.

Archy's tactics were, of course, to prevent this, and rid himself of his adversary, as he felt all the time how horribly risky it was to struggle and wrestle there, for the ledge was six feet wide at the outside, and not much more than twice the length.

But in a few minutes, as the encounter grew more hot, and they held on to each other, and swayed here and there, all thought of the position they occupied was forgotten. One minute Ram, by entwining his leg within those of his adversary, nearly threw him; then, by a dexterous effort, Archy shook himself fairly free. Then they clasped again, swayed here and there, Archy getting far the worse of the encounter from weakness, but, with a final call upon himself, he strove desperately to recover lost ground, and made so fierce an effort to throw Ram in turn, that he succeeded.

His effort was not sufficiently well sustained, though, for success to have attended it, but for one fact. They had struggled to the extreme edge of the inward part of the shelf, and as the midshipman was at the end of his strength, and Ram realised it, the boy smiled, thrust back his right leg to give impetus to his next thrust, and his foot went down over the rock.

There was a cry, a jerk, and the midshipman was down on his chest, as he had fallen, clinging to the edge, for the young smuggler seemed to have been s.n.a.t.c.hed from his arms, and was now lying thirty feet below on the edge of a sloping rock, part of his body without support, and apparently about to glide off into the waves below.

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN.

Archy shuddered, his eyes grew fixed, and his whole body seemed to be frozen. The minute before he had been burning with rage, and struggling to gain the mastery over his enemy; now he would have given anything to have undone the past.

"Ram!" he cried excitedly,--"Ram, my lad, turn over quickly, and lay hold, or you will be off."

There was no reply. Ram's face looked ghastly, and his eyes were closed.

"I've killed him! I know I have!" cried Archy excitedly; and he strained himself more over the edge of the rock, to gaze wildly about for a means of descent, but there was only one: if he wished to get down to where the boy lay, apparently about to slip off into the sea, there was only one way, and that was to jump. Thirty feet! And if he did jump, he could not do so without coming down in contact with the boy, perhaps right on him, when it seemed as if a touch of a finger would send him headlong into the sea.

"What shall I do?" thought the midshipman. "It is horrible. Ram!" he shouted. "Rouse up! For goodness' sake, speak! Try to creep farther on to the rock. Oh, help I help!"

He shouted this frantically, but a wild and mournful cry from a gull was the only response, and his voice seemed to be utterly lost in the vast s.p.a.ce around.

"I shall have murdered the poor fellow," groaned Archy; and he stared about wildly again, in search of some means of getting to his adversary.

None--none whatever. It would have been madness to jump, and he knew it--death--certain death to both. No one could have leaped down that distance on to a shelf of rock without serious injury, and then it would have been impossible to save himself from the rebound which must have sent him headlong into the sea below. This even if the shelf had not already been occupied; and Ram lay there, evidently stunned, if not killed.

What did Mr Brough and old Gurr always say? "_Be cool in danger_--_never lose your nerve_!"

"Yes, that was it!" he said, as he recalled lessons that he had received again and again. But what could he do? Even as he gazed down, he momentarily expected to see Ram glide slowly off, and, with brow covered with great drops of perspiration and his hands wet and cold, the midshipman rose panting to his feet, looked round, and sent up shout after shout for help.

Again his voice seemed utterly lost in the air, and a peculiar, querulous cry from the gull, which came slowly sailing round, was all the response he got.

"Ram!" he cried at last. "Ram! Don't play tricks, lad. Speak to me.

I want to help you. Tell me what to do--to get help. Can't you speak?"

There was no mistaking the state of affairs; the boy was either dead or completely stunned by his fall.

Archy put his hands to his temples, and stood looking down wildly for a few moments, to a.s.sure himself that he could not reach his late adversary; and then, perfectly satisfied of the impossibility of the task, he began resolutely to climb up the face of the cliff where he had come down, and, setting his teeth hard, went from crack to crevice and ledge, on and on, seeing nothing but the white face below him on the shelf, and praying the while that the poor lad might not fall before he came back with help.

The work was more dangerous than he had antic.i.p.ated, and twice he slipped, once so badly that he was holding on merely by the sharp edge of a projecting piece of stone, but he found foothold again, drew himself up, and went on climbing again, till, with face streaming with perspiration and his fingers wet with blood, of which he left traces on the stone as he went on, he at last reached the opening he had fought so hard to make, climbed in, turned and leaned out as far as he could, to try and get a glimpse of Ram, and be sure that he had not glided into the sea.

He could see nothing; Ram was far below under the projecting rock; and, drawing back once more, the midshipman began to hurry down the steps and then the slope, into the black quarry that he had fancied he had quitted for ever.

To his great delight, there, right away before him, was Ram's lanthorn, burning brightly with the door open, and shining upon the old sails and shipping gear, stores, and remains of wrecks saved from the sea.

But he did not stay. He caught up the lanthorn, closed the door lest a puff again should extinguish the candle, and then hesitated a moment or two as a thought struck him.

"No," he said aloud, "I must get help;" and, hurrying toward the opening, he kicked against the basket of provisions the lad had brought back. He made his way to the top of the other slope and shouted,--

"Hi, Jemmy!--smuggler! Quick! Come down!"

There was no response, for, good-heartedly enough, Ram had, as before-said, repented, and come back alone.

What should he do? Climb out, and run for help?

No, he did not know where to find it; and by the time he had discovered some of Ram's people, it would be too late; so, with the way of escape open to him, and freedom ready to welcome him once again, he hurried back, lanthorn in hand, selected a coil of rope from the pile of stores, threw it over his shoulder, pa.s.sing his left arm through, and, leaving the lanthorn where he had found it, he hurried back to the narrow pa.s.sage, climbed the slope and the steps up to the opening; and, with the rope hanging like a sword-belt from his shoulder, impeding his movements, and getting caught in the projections over and over again, he once more began to descend.

How he got down he hardly knew, but long before he reached the great shelf, he was so incommoded by the rope that he contrived, spread-eagled as he was against the rock face, to get it over his head, and then carefully let it drop, uttering a cry of anguish as he saw it fall, catching against a piece of rock which diverted its course, so that it rested nearly half over the edge, and he clung there, gazing down wildly, expecting to see it disappear, in which case he would have had to climb again for another coil.

Fortunately it lodged, and in a few minutes he was down beside it, and close at the end of the great ledge, gazing over wonderingly, and with his eyes half blinded by a mist, expecting to see the narrow shelf below bare.

But no; Ram had not moved, and there was yet time.

Seizing the coil of rope, he shook it open, and selecting one of the biggest blocks of stone, which had at some time fallen from above, he made one end of the rope fast, tried it to make sure, lowered the other over the edge, and carefully slid down, swinging to and fro, and turning slowly round, to hang for a few moments, trying to plant his foot on the ledge without touching Ram, for he felt more than ever convinced he would glide off at the slightest shock.

It was impossible. The only way was to draw up his legs, give himself an impetus by kicking against the rock, swinging to and fro, and then letting himself, at a certain moment when he was well beyond the boy, drop on to the shelf.

He tried the experiment, and swung past Ram again and again, but dared not leave go for fear of missing the rock with his feet.

At last he ventured: swung well past the prostrate figure, loosened his grasp, alighted on the narrow ledge quite clear, but could not preserve his balance, and fell back, uttering a low cry, as he tightened his grasp upon the rope again, but not till he had slipped rapidly down a good twenty feet, where he began swinging to and fro again.

For a few moments it seemed all over; there was the sea at a terrible depth below him, and all that distance to climb up with his hands bleeding and giving him intense pain, while his arms felt half jerked out of their sockets.

But he had had plenty of experience in climbing ropes, and, muttering, "Don't lose your nerve," he got the line well twisted round his legs, and climbed up again sufficiently high to repeat his former experiment, this time with success, and he stood upon the ledge and loosely knotted the rope about his waist, to guard against letting the end go, before kneeling down tremulously, and getting one hand well in under the collar of the boy's rough coat.

For some minutes he felt giddy; there was a mist before his eyes, and he involuntarily pressed himself close to the rock, expecting to fall, and in a curious, dreamy way he saw himself hanging far below, swinging at the end of the rope.

But all this pa.s.sed off, and, exerting his strength as far as he could in the terribly dangerous, crippled position in which he was, he gave three or four sharp jerks, and succeeded in drawing Ram well on to the shelf, when, in the revulsion of feeling, the dizziness came back, and he felt that he must faint.

"Leave off, will yer?" came roughly to his ears, and roused him, telling him that the boy was not dead. "D'yer hear, Jemmy Dadd? Great coward!

Father know'd you'd hit me like that, he'd half kill you."

There was a pause, and a sob of relief struggled from Archy's breast.

Then Ram began to mutter again.

"Oh, my head!" he groaned. "Oh, my head! Oh, my--"

He opened his eyes, and began to stare wildly; then he seemed to recollect himself, and started up to gaze up, then over the side at the sea far below, and lastly at his companion in misfortune.